2012年2月27日 星期一

Recipes for Health

Bibimbap: Rice Takes a Trip to Korea

Beef, Winter Squash, Spinach and Cucumber

Andrew Scrivani for The New York Times

Bibimpap With Beef, Winter Squash, Spinach and Cucumber

By MARTHA ROSE SHULMAN

Several years ago I wrote a book called “The Foodlover’s Atlas of the World,” a research project that allowed me to try signature dishes from just about every country in the world. One of my favorites was the classic Korean mixed rice dish known as bibimbap.

In traditional bibimbap, a large serving of rice is placed in the center of a hot bowl and surrounded with small amounts of meat — usually beef — and seasoned vegetables that include a mixture of cultivated vegetables (cucumber, carrot, daikon or turnips, spinach, lettuce, mushrooms) and wild items like fiddlehead ferns and reconstituted dried toraji (bellflower roots). A fried egg is often placed on top of the rice, and diners stir everything together. In Jeonju, which along with Jinju and Tongyeong is famous for its bibimbap, special stone bowls are used for the dish. They are coated with sesame oil and heated until very hot so that when the rice is placed in them, a crust forms on the bottom. The egg is broken onto the hot rice and cooks as it is stirred in.

Bibimbap can also provide a palette for leftovers. The Korean cookbook author Hi Soo Shin Hepinstall writes, in “Growing Up in a Korean Kitchen,” of how her family enjoyed the dish for days after family celebrations, when there would be many delectable leftovers on hand.

The concept of bibimbap is perfect for Recipes for Health. I’ve broken with tradition and have chosen to make this week’s recipes with brown rice and other grains. You can use the recipes as templates and choose whatever vegetables you like. The recipes call for 2 to 3 ounces of protein per serving, as this dish is really about the grains and vegetables. But if you are feeding hungry teenage boys, as I am, you may want to increase those quantities.

Bibimbap With Beef, Winter Squash, Spinach and Cucumber

Beef is the most typical meat served with bibimbap. It’s marinated and quickly seared in a hot wok or frying pan.

2. Mix together the rice vinegar, sesame oil, garlic, scallions, sesame seeds and salt to taste in a small bowl or measuring cup. Add red pepper paste if desired. Set aside.

3. While the beef is marinating, toss the cucumber with salt to taste and place in a colander in the sink for 15 to 30 minutes. Rinse and squeeze dry. Place in a bowl and toss with 2 teaspoons of the vinegar and sesame oil mixture. Set aside in the refrigerator.

4. Steam the squash over an inch of boiling water until tender, about 10 minutes. Remove from the heat and toss in a bowl with 1 tablespoon of the vinegar and sesame oil mixture. Add salt or soy sauce to taste.

5. Wash the spinach and wilt in a large frying pan over high heat. Remove from the heat, press out excess water and toss in a bowl with 1 tablespoon of the vinegar and sesame oil mixture.

6. Heat a wok or large, heavy skillet over medium-high heat until a drop of water evaporates immediately on contact. Add the canola oil. Stir-fry the beef for 3 to 5 minutes, until lightly browned, and remove to a plate. Add the shiitakes to the pan, let sit without stirring for 1 minute, then stir-fry for another minute or two, until tender. Remove to a plate.

7. Fry the eggs in the hot pan or in a separate nonstick skillet until the whites are set and the yolks are still runny. Season with salt and pepper.

8. Heat 4 wide soup bowls. Place a mound of hot grains in the middle of each one and surround with the meat and vegetables, as well as kimchi if desired, each ingredient in its own little pile. Place a fried egg and a small spoonful of chili paste on top of the rice and garnish with the toasted nori and sesame seeds. Serve at once. Diners should break the egg into the rice. Pass the chili paste and add more as desired.

Note: You can also arrange the food on a large platter and serve family style.

Yield: 4 servings.

Advance preparation: You can do this in whatever order is convenient for you. The grains can be cooked ahead and reheated. The cucumbers, spinach and squash can all be prepared ahead and refrigerated, then reheated before serving. It’s best to cook the beef and mushrooms just before serving so they’re nice and hot. But since this is often a way to use leftovers, you can also reheat.

Pot Luck

By LARA VAPNYAR

Published: May 25, 2008

Around 1979, when I was a child living in Russia, my teacher once assigned our class an essay: if a Magi promised to grant you a single wish, what would you ask for? I knew what I wanted, and I wrote about it with passion and sincerity. I thought it was a beautiful wish until my teacher read my essay and said she was appalled — she couldn’t believe anyone would waste a wish like that. She leaned close and whispered, “Wouldn’t you rather wish for world peace?”

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I considered her words and nodded. I did worry about the cold war and the arms race and the stockpiles of nuclear warheads everywhere. We learned about these things during weekly political-awareness sessions, and we did feel frightened. Yes, world peace would have been very nice — but what I still really wanted was a magic pot that could produce any food I fantasized about. And since in Russia at that time the variety of available food was very limited, my magic pot would have a lot of work to do.

I had always paid close attention to the descriptions of food in books. If a certain description struck my imagination, I could think about it for days, weeks, even months and years, trying to visualize and taste the food. When I was about 5, my mother read a book to me in which the villainess was crazy about cheesecake — so crazy that the hero was able to lure her into a wolf trap with a piece of the cake. Neither I nor my mother had ever seen cheesecake, so I imagined it like a pie with a golden cheesy crust and a layer of hard salty cheese in the middle. In my mind, a cheesecake tasted something like my grandmother’s grilled-cheese sandwiches, only infinitely better. Falling into a wolf trap didn’t seem like such a high price for trying a slice.

Asparagus was another mystery. I didn’t know it as a child, but once I started reading adult novels set in 19th-century Russia or 20th-century Europe and America, asparagus seemed to be the primary food a literary character would eat. I would read the asparagus pages over and over, trying to conjure a picture of it. The descriptions were maddeningly incomplete. The author would go on and on with his boring psychological insights, mentioning asparagus only in passing.

Nobody I knew had ever seen asparagus. I couldn’t even find it in the huge Household Encyclopedia that had pictures of various fruits and vegetables I had never tasted, like mango or kohlrabi. I constructed an image of asparagus from bits of novelistic description. To me, it was green, expensive and exquisite, and it had a stem and a head, with the head being the juiciest part. I pictured that asparagus was shaped like two teaspoons put together, forming a hollow locket on a long stem. It was firm, round and smooth, and filled with exactly two teaspoons of buttery juice inside.

And then there were oysters. From one book to the next, characters gorged on them. But as was the case with asparagus, the authors didn’t provide much detail. I applied the same method of deductive reasoning and came up with a sea creature, something like a shrimp, only larger, that was gray and eaten alive. They could crawl around the plate, and it was probably scary to put them into your mouth. They must have tasted completely wonderful for all those characters to put up with that.

When I saw oysters for the first time in a small restaurant in New York, I was shocked. They were just little puddles of slime. But I could imagine their brisk, slightly sweet taste before even trying them. I was instructed to swallow them whole. “Swallow them whole?” I asked. “But I won’t be able to taste them.” “You will. You will taste them while they’re slipping down your throat.” I put an oyster in my mouth, but I couldn’t bring myself to swallow it. I bit on it first. The taste was amazing. I tried to swallow the next one, but I was overcome by the same desire to bite on it, and so I did. I simply couldn’t believe that if I swallowed it the taste would be any better. I’ve eaten hundreds of oysters since, but I still haven’t swallowed one without biting on it first.

Cheesecake, though, was a big disappointment. It was bland, too sweet and so thoroughly unexciting. It tasted like farm cheese with sour cream and sugar — a dish that my grandmother pushed on me daily because she said it made my bones stronger.

The first time I tried asparagus I was equally disappointed. It didn’t taste sublime, and it wasn’t rare or exquisite. I ate it many times — raw, boiled, steamed, puréed — and once, only once, did I have a revelation. We were at the house of our friends Inna and Alex in Manhattan for a spring-themed dinner. Alex served fresh farmers’ market asparagus, very simply prepared. The texture and the taste were exactly as I had imagined. It had been steamed, the stalk perfectly tender, the head soft but not mushy, with a faint buttery sweetness. It tasted like an old fantasy suddenly coming true.

Today there is hardly any opportunity for food fantasies. If I see a description of an unfamiliar dish in a novel (for example, lamb biryani in Jhumpa Lahiri’s “Namesake”), I can look it up on the Internet, and within minutes I know what it looks like, what it’s made from and how to cook it. And then, if I still feel like tasting it, I can order it at one of the many Indian restaurants in New York City. Every dish we can think of is within reach. It feels as if we have been granted that magic pot without ever asking for it.

So, I guess my teacher was right: I should have asked for world peace.

Lara Vapnyar is the author of “Memoirs of a Muse” and “There Are Jews in My House.” Her new collection of short stories is “Broccoli and Other Tales of Food and Love.”

2012年2月9日 星期四

France is the home of the baguette. But just try getting a fresh one in the evening, or on a holiday, or even in August, when many of the country’s 33,000 bakeries are closed.

法國是棍子麵包的故鄉。但試試看在傍晚或假日，或甚至該國3萬3000多家麵包店大多休息歇業的8月份，買一條新鮮的棍子麵包吧。

Jean-Louis Hecht thinks he has the answer.

吉恩－路易‧赫克認為他有解決之道。

The baker from northeast France has rolled out a 24-hour automated baguette dispenser, promising warm bread for hungry night owls, shift workers or anyone else who didn’t have time to pick one up during their bakery’s opening hours.

"This is the bakery of tomorrow," proclaimed Hecht, who foresees expansion in Paris, around Europe and even the U.S. "If other bakers don’t want to enter the niche, they’re going to get decimated."

「這是麵包業的未來，」如此宣稱的赫克預見在巴黎、歐洲各地，甚至是美國拓展事業。「倘若其他麵包師傅不搶占此一利基，他們就完蛋了。」

For now, though, that’s a lot of talk.

但截至目前為止，一切仍僅限於紙上談兵。

He’s only operating two machines-one in Paris, another in the town of Hombourg-Haut in northeastern France-each next to his own bake shops. The vending machines take partially precooked loaves, bake them up and deliver them steaming within seconds to customers, all for euro. （AP）